


The Dark in the Desert

by Perish_this_Pigeon



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Icathia, M/M, One Shot, Other, Shurima, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perish_this_Pigeon/pseuds/Perish_this_Pigeon
Summary: An unlucky soul has the misfortune to encounter Malzahar.An unlucky soul who will never know how deep these plots run beneath the scorching sands.
Relationships: Talon Du Couteau/Malzahar
Kudos: 12





	The Dark in the Desert

Scream into the void. But if it whispers back, run.  
\---  
“There’s a place in the desert, a place where the ground drops away miles deep and miles wide. Desert sands spill over the sides to its depths in mock waterfalls, before disappearing into the pit.

Even the blazing desert sun and scorching winds cannot bring light nor heat to this special place. The noonday light seems to bend away from this eternal chasm, and if you near it you feel neither cold nor heat, just an absence of temperature, like the feeling of wet, cold, metal. The desert wind blows directly over the lip. The void neither takes nor gives any air.

Scientists, militaries, explorers, have all studied this pit. We know it forms a jagged cut through the dunes, like a knife slash. We know at a certain point, even sound disappears in the pit. We know anything that enters never appears again. 

Go on, seek out the particular strangers in the streets or dig in the refuse of these ancient ruins. They’ll tell you stories of the darkness reaching up to consume victims, of oblivion snuffing out their screams, of ancient legends of monsters that crawled up from the pit of the universe.

The few inane souls who venture into the heart of the sands, the even fewer who find this phenomenon, will see abandoned camps, and village rooftops half-buried in sand. And the great dark nothing, eating up the desert dunes. 

I tell you this now. Walk the edge of the pit. Walk on the edge of death and life. At one point you’ll find a spot in the sand, a place where the dark laps at the cliff edge with ocean waves.

You will find a marking there. An eye surrounded by three tentacles, chiseled into a stone.

Lay down at the edge of the chasm, hold your breath, and dip your head into the void. You will feel gritty sand cutting your palms, wind tugging at your clothes, but your eyes and ears will only know the silence of nothing. The absence of feeling, perhaps, may be even more crippling than pain.

The void will pull at your mind. With your heart out of its reach, it can only attempt to riddle away at your head and leech away your memories and sanity. 

At this point, do not resist. You may cling to the edge of life, but pour you memories, your anguish, your longing, your secrets, into the void. 

The lucky ones will hold something back. They will try to keep a secret, to withhold the void’s payment. These lucky ones will have their brain poisoned with oblivion, and fall from the cascading sands into the void’s gaping maw.

Very few choose to pour out their heart and soul, to spill it into the midnight dark. But even at this moment, you must remember the grit of sand on your palms and the sun’s heat on your back. The void’s hunger is eternal, and will chase the taste of your fluttering heartbeat like a beast. That is the single thing you must hold to your chest and never let go.

If you endure the next moment, which will feel like an eternity, the void may deem you worthy. It will reward your resilience with all that you offered it, and award your abandon with a sliver of itself. A fraction of the millennia of history and victims it has consumed and known will be yours.

Then the darkness will leach out of your ears and you will pull yourself back into the scorching wind and blinding sun. You will gasp at the air, at the glory of life, of everything. 

Even then, it’s not over. The void’s power and knowledge will weigh on your soul and mind. Even then, do not give in. Lose control, and it will crush your sanity with the weight of one thousand worlds. Remain strong and humble, and even the deepest pits of infinity will bend to your will.

Conquer this last challenge, the final gift of nothing, and you will be able to conquer anything.”  
\---  
It hurts. Everything aches. There’s a point in the center of my head, it feels like it’s trying to crush my skull into my neck.

The man said this is the final challenge. The man with eyes that glowed blue. Who was wreathed in the violet dark... He looked almost like a boy, only slightly older than I. Hold on. I have to hold on just a little longer. 

Aargh! I keep seeing these flashes. The sky exploding scarlet. Screams. Tears dripping onto calloused hands. Stars spiraling into glowing whirlpools. Charging through roiling black mist with death carried in my hoofbeats.

It all ends in a dark void. Ha… I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I need to find that man. I need…

I need water. There’s a woman who dances with blades. Water. Please… I’m flying… ocean air beneath my wings… water… the ocean is water… goddammit dive down… I need water…

No! Stop it! Stop! I need to find that man, that boy. I need to find him. I need…  
\---  
Poor soul.  
She stumbled up to me, a  
skeleton image of her former self.  
This poor soul is truly strong. Stronger than most were.  
She collapsed on the cracked stone steps of these ruins  
The weight of the universe crushing this poor soul.  
Her gasps rattle in her lungs.  
Does this poor soul know these are her last breaths?  
I feel the infinity creeping through her mind,  
turning her blood to shadow.  
Stealing her pain and breath and dreams  
Did she think she could hold the weight of stars  
Steer the river of time with her mortal hands?

No, only I have ever achieved this.  
I, Malzahar, the Prophet of the Void.  
But there is my equal out there somewhere.  
A girl with stone skin who has accomplished all I have ever done  
Who I must destroy…  
That is why I need you, Talon.  
You, the most skilled of assassins, of material crimes  
I, the harbinger of oblivion, of immaterial laments  
Together, we can destroy the final resilient.  
Well, what do you say?


End file.
